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Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Legacy, broccoli and a herd of water buffalo

This is a guest post by Robb Lucy (www.yourlegacysmile.com) who is a cancer survivor with
a rich background in broadcasting, production, marketing and non-profit
development. Robb has been involved with
several local, national and international non-profits, and was recently awarded
the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee medal as co-founder of the Make-A-Wish Founda­tion
in Canada and Director of MAW International. He is now writing a book designed to get people to rethink Legacy giving.

Do this little test: at a polite
dinner table ask your guests ‘what will
your Legacy be?’ Most will end up staring into their broccoli. No time.
The career. The kids. I’ll get to it. I’ll get to it already.

I
didn’t think I’d have a Legacy either. We couldn’t have kids, so after
collecting all my ‘stuff’, and with no one to give it to, I wouldn’t be able to
leave a ‘Legacy’.

Then
a funny thing happened. On an airplane I told my friend I was going to receive
a national award for the charity work I’d done. And I just finished a book on
my Father’s war experiences. And I just
finished twenty years of building a local Literacy initiative. “That’s quite a Legacy” he said. Huh?
said I.

I’m
one of 80 million Boomers. We’re getting old & wise enough to ask some
questions. As Socrates said: “The unexamined
life is not worth living.”

‘Do I want to make a difference?’ ‘Do I want
to leave a mark?’ ‘Do I want to feel connected to people and happy with what
I’m doing and what I’ll leave behind?’

Remember Star Trek and the credo they all lived by - ‘The Prime
Directive’? Picard, Data, Jordie and the others agreed there could be no
interference with the internal development of alien civilizations.

The prime directive in the animal world is to ensure the next
generation. My wife and I started raising honey bees. Nobody works harder than
our little bees to create the honey to feed them through next winter and start
again. And if the Queen doesn't make it, the remaining bees make another Queen.
The Prime Directive is to keep on, keepin’ on.

Our
prime directive, according to the Dalai Lama, is really quite simple: ‘To be
happy’ he says.